Meeting with the Outer God
"E-Evan... Evan...!"
The violet light itself meant nothing. What flooded through me with overwhelming gratitude was the simple fact that he had risen once more—to protect me.
When I had been driven into a corner, when I stood at the edge of the cliff with one foot already lifting free, it felt as though he had returned to my side.
"Did you come back? To protect me?"
With dull eyes and a face covered in bruises, he only stared at me. No answer. Not even a nod. He simply kept scattering purple light around him while gazing at me in silence.
"N-no, kuh—you can't stay here!"
The hunchback gestured frantically, terror written all over him as if he understood something the rest of us did not. At his words the zombies lunged toward Evan with terrifying speed.
"No!"
I threw out my arms to seize them, but the moment I caught hold of a leg—
"Kyaah?!"
I had never imagined a reanimated corpse could possess such strength. My own body was dragged along as they raced forward, intent on tearing Evan apart.
And yet something reached out from the violet smoke and seized them hard. Tentacles—or rather, an invisible force—began to crush the corpses. The fog revealed only the barest outlines of their forms.
In that grotesque stillness I was finally able to cool my head.
The one standing before me was not Evan.
That violet light I had seen beyond the black veil. The purple hand that had reached for me. Something else had possessed Evan's body.
"H-hiiiieeek!!!"
Crushing the corpses before its eyes, the thing took a slow step forward. The necromancer scrambled desperately for the exit, summoning still more zombies into the house in a pathetic display of flight. His life ended in an instant. An empty space opened in the fog, and through it the force punched straight through the hunchback's waist and shattered his brain. The surrounding zombies collapsed at the same moment like puppets with their strings cut.
With that, I was finally able to shake free of the horrible, clinging filth that had been climbing my body. A house that had been relatively clean only moments before was now a ruin of blood, venom, and scraps of flesh streaming from the corpses.
"...!"
He staggered visibly, on the verge of falling—and somehow I ran to catch him. Because it was Evan's body. Because it wore Evan's face. Because the sight of him moving again was so desperately precious that I could not help myself.
"..."
He did not breathe. His heart did not beat. He was only moving the body—using it as a vessel for his own power. Violet light flickered through Evan's veins; his eyes filled with purple. From the hole in his chest a crack was slowly spreading, as if the body could no longer endure and was about to shatter completely.
"...Please let Evan go. I'm begging you."
I had clung to this wretched life only because his body still existed—because I had believed that someday I might be with him again. If I lost even his body, I would no longer be able to remember him at all. So I made my request with careful courtesy to the one who occupied him.
"..."
There was no answer. And yet it seemed to want to answer. It stared into my eyes, and with the tentacles that pushed back the surrounding fog it wiped away my tears and stroked my hair. That gentle manner matched the violet presence I had seen beyond the veil. But it could not speak. Whether a human body was still unfamiliar, or whether the mouth simply would not move, the being only watched me through Evan's ruined eyes—
Then, without warning, it reached out and seized my face.
"Ugh...!"
The monstrous strength that gripped my head with only three fingers was nothing human. When all five fingers covered my eyes and forced my head upward, the sheer violence of it filled me with terror.
"Let go of me! Let go!"
Ah—so even that brief kindness had been malice after all. Had it simply taken the body of the one I loved and waited for a chance to claim me? The thought drained the will to resist from my limbs. I began to go limp. It would crush my skull, or pierce me through with its tentacles. Or make me beg for death. But at least the sensation of being killed by the form of the one I loved did not seem so terrible. I could see his face moving one last time.
...
What greeted me, however, was something entirely different.
Violet light unfurled across the darkness before my eyes, and places began to flow into my vision until I could only stand there, dazed. Though everything was thickly overlaid with purple, the place was the village where I now stood. Whether it was showing me the past, I could not say—but the horrors I had witnessed in the village were gone; only the buildings remained.
I walked past a familiar structure and a church appeared. Neither large nor small. I entered, crossed beyond the altar, and found a room with a bookshelf. And then—I was going straight through that bookshelf?
The sensation of objects rushing toward my face was deeply frightening. I tried to close my eyes by instinct, but the advancing vision would not stop. As if restless spirits were passing through walls and whispering curses, my body—no, my sight—passed cleanly through it without resistance. The cross-sections of books swept past my eyes; the feeling of seeing into the very grain of the wood was thoroughly unnerving.
Leaving that chill behind, I followed the passage to its end. There stood a single door, sealed with countless holy relics and prayer texts. My vision was pushed back again and again, as if I were not permitted to go further. When I reached out an arm, the arm did not appear—as though the sight were not mine at all. It simply held the door in its gaze, as if to tell me that this was the threshold I must cross. The vision flickered, burning the scene into my eyes with certainty.
The flickering grew faster, and darkness and violet light began to blend. One moment I stood before the door drowned in purple; the next I saw the cruelly dead hunchback and the corpses reduced to meat. The two scenes alternated until I no longer knew where I was—in that church, or in the violated priest's house. Darkness and vision spun wildly; just as dizziness was about to overwhelm me, I saw my own body standing in the original place.
"Ha—haah, haah..."
I clutched my head against the afterimages still burning before my eyes and writhed in pain. For a long time I pressed my forehead, gasping, as if those places had been driven into me like nails. I was nauseous—violently so. The sensation of having truly been there, of having crossed space in an instant and looked around, only to snap back to this room—I did not know which rhythm to match. All I could do was blink hard and steady my breathing so I would not vomit.
The being that watched me struggle with that unfamiliar sensation through Evan's body eventually floated free, casually sweeping the objects from the desk. Then, slowly, with the aid of its tentacles, it laid the body flat in midair and set it gently upon the desk. When everything was finished, the light vanished in an instant—as if it had never been there at all.
Some of the houses seemed to have been empty from the start—perhaps the owners had gone traveling, or moved away and left the place waiting for a buyer. So I carried his cracked body into a house that was bare save for immovable beds and furniture, a little dust settled over everything, and laid him down.
"...What in the world was that light?"
The violet radiance I had seen veiled in black when the place shifted. The presence that had seemed to seek me out from the beginning, that had tried to comfort me—and that had now saved me from that nightmare, moving Evan's body to do it. It must have been a miracle.
I carefully bound the strange wounds left on his body—wounds that felt like cracks in a statue, fissures in hard stone—with bandages, drew a blanket over him, and pressed a kiss to his forehead.
"You always protect me, Evan."
Even in death he had protected me. Of course, I would have to go there and ask what the violet light truly was... but at least this body had somehow endured the possession. A body of the short-lived, straining with everything it had. The thought that he had given everything so that I might live happily in this filthy world brought tears streaming down my face without end.
And after seeing that violet light, a strange confidence began to rise in me. The sense that I might find a way. Hope that I could reclaim Evan began to take shape. I had heard of prayer's power being temporarily amplified in a living body, and of revelations being granted—but never once of a power descending into a dead body and using it. This was clearly no god of this world. Not the god I served. And certainly not the god that necromancer had worshipped.
But if that god held goodwill toward me, as it had shown so far—and if there was something it wanted from me—then if it would only return Evan to me...
I would gladly offer up even my own lifespan.
So now. At this very hour that was neither sunrise nor moonset, balanced on the threshold—when the color of the sky from the day I had cut off my ear and gone to Evan's side unfurled before my eyes—I decided to set out for the ruined church.
Following the violet revelation I had been shown, I walked the path, and sure enough the church was there. Every window shattered, bloodstains everywhere. I crossed the interior and slowly approached the altar.
"Hik...!"
A corpse lay sprawled there. Only the torn vestments still hinted that he had once led the priests of this church. The signs of butchery were almost certainly the necromancer's work. Yet for some reason I could not find the entrance to the room. In the revelation there had clearly been a wooden door... ah.
Still bent over the body, I looked toward the altar and saw a keyhole set into the floor. The key would of course be on the priest's clothes or around his neck, I thought, and began searching the corpse in earnest. The rest of the dead. The unspoken rule against rifling through bodies. Such things no longer held any meaning for me. If anything, the pounding of my heart—the expectation I carried—made my hands bolder still. I might reclaim Evan. I might bring the dead back to life. Something others would call absurd, and yet I found myself believing it.
The cold touch of congealed blood had long since become familiar. I probed the wounds, turned out the pockets, tore open the damp clothing without hesitation, searching every place a key might hide. Before long I drew a blood-soaked key from inside his robes. Just as I had expected.
I fitted it into the keyhole and turned. With a heavy grinding sound, a stone door on the far side of the altar began to descend. Beyond it lay only the bookshelf and desk I had seen. A desk stacked with prayer texts—especially blessed paper used for seals—and a vessel of holy oil, and a bookshelf so laden with ornaments it might as well have been a display case. And a fair amount of empty space in front of the shelf.
I gripped the edge and shoved hard. It toppled without resistance, the ornaments remaining firmly fixed in place—clear proof that this had always been the way in and out. I stepped carefully into the space beyond and walked into the dark.
But this passage did not feel so much submerged in darkness as swallowed by something violet. It was too bright to call pitch-black. Like a heartbeat, the light slowly brightened and dimmed. It was illuminating the dark, thinning its density. Yes—the light was devouring the darkness. It was eroding the surrounding space, claiming it, hungering for it. Expanding its domain as naturally as breathing.
But I could not stop. The world had already stolen my happiness, my love. And afterward it had worked tirelessly to heap misery upon me. I had nearly been violated more times than I could count; I had been humiliated. So there was no reason left to be afraid.
At the end of the corridor, prayer texts hung in tatters. Even the writing had blurred and fallen into ruin, the original text no longer legible. This was a being of great power. If it could swallow a seal whole, it was more than worth hoping for. And yet that immense power was still terrifying, and it took considerable courage simply to take hold of the handle. Even after I gripped it, my hand shook so badly I could not put proper force into it; I clamped my other hand over it and tried to pull with all my strength.
"...Nngh."
Once more—this time with my teeth clenched and my feet braced against the wall—I shoved my body away from the door.
"Nngh—"
It did not budge. And light was coming from it. The seals, it seemed, were preventing it from turning. So I tore them off without mercy. I raked my nails through the paper, shredded it, and used the scraps to scrub away whatever had been written on the door. Then, astonishingly, the door opened of its own accord.
Violet fog was flowing, just as before. The open doorway was filled with it. From outside, nothing within could be seen. But one step—the moment I crossed the threshold—I saw the true nature of what had been sealed in this room.
"W-what in the world is this..."
The room itself was dark. But at its center stood a single altar, pouring out violet light and fog—barely supporting a box that looked as though it had been pierced through and melted, as if something had been imprisoned inside. And the moment that box fully entered the center of my vision, it crumbled. From the fragments rose a single eye, floating in midair.
An eye that blazed with colors that seemed to hold both darkness and light, that held everything—an eye that, within this space, had fixed itself solely upon me—had somehow been sealed inside the church of a small village.